Chapter 33 - Days LVI- LXIII: Determination And Upgrades
The day started very early like my brain had a build-in clock. The sun was climbing its way into the sky. Gray was covering the city. I ate, packed up, and departed. With a backpack full of food, a knife in my pocket, and a solid oak club in my right hand.
There was no emotion in my head. The stillness of mind was continuing, although not as strong as yesterday. Time has its tool on everything. Especially on emotions. They fade away like smoke after a fire.
I made something like a camp next to the third gate. I left most of the food in one of the ruins, but took the backpack, alongside a little snack. Then I went outside, trying to find my way to the nest of rats. It took around half of the day. It was not as close as I thought, but in the end, I was where I wanted to be, and the hunt began.
[0)ᴠʟ It started as previously, with one kill next to the mound, and ran. Then I waited for scouts hidden in the bushes. To ambush them, and kill. Fights were not easy and I got multiple minor wounds. Mainly cuts. Even though by the end of the day I had 56 rat crystals.
I repeated the process for the next 5 days coming back to the city to eat and sleeping beside the wall, outside. The last two I took it easy though because my body was too exhausted. In the end, I got 219 more crystals. Total of 275. Before my last day ended I went to get a few goblins. I found a group of 5 and killed them. The goblin crystals were crucial to me since I didn’t want to make a fuss over the rat ones, and as a consequence, lose my hunting ground.
With a backpack full of crystals I headed back to the house. I had no food, but I could starve a bit if it would allow me to avoid more trouble. So I went to sleep on an empty stomach.
If I would show with a backpack full of crystals, different than the goblin ones, when other hunters, and especially full Nacho’s gang, were around, they could try to take a peek at what inside. Afterward, a lot of bad things could happen, so it was better to wait and approach the city center when almost nobody was around.
The next day went just as planned. I did my best to avoid scavengers, but it was impossible since they were everywhere around the center of the city. Fortunately, they didn’t try anything stupid, but if they did, I had my knife at the ready. I approached Maurício to pay the tax. He took the crystal but was very curious about the content of my backpack. I knew the news will reach Nacho’s ears the very moment he will come back from hunting.
I put the backpack on the glyph and sold the score. All of 275 rat ones. I kept the goblin crystals in my house, for the future tax. That put me at a nice number of 34289 points. An incredible amount.
I, without hesitation, healed myself. Left hands bone was healing badly because there was nobody to put it straight, so the price of heal was high – 10k points. Minor wounds and exhaustion were 1,5k and my stupid eyes another 2k. Total of 13,5k, which left me with 20789 points. Part of me wanted to leave it in case of emergency, but it was quickly shut down by anger.
Instead, I invested in strength 55 times which put this statistic on equal with dexterity. A strange feeling rushed thru my body, and I really felt stronger. But that was not enough, So I put another fifteen points in dexterity. Again, the strange feeling, and I was left with 6614 points.
I bought food for 80 points and drank four portions of water from my bowl, which I brought with me. Then I left. Through all this process I tried to look around for Aisha s couple of times. Fixed eyes were a big help since I could see faces from afar. She was nowhere to be seen.
Day ended with 6530 points on my account and four goblin crystals hidden in my home.